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Experience

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Poetry is a funny quirk of literature. A poem must stand on its own as an individual work, certain in its uncertainty, quick witted in its use of metaphor and language, and unique in the poet's style and grace. It must be different, ah yes, yet it must be the same.

Everyone has an opinion. Like assumptions, opinions can often leave our inflated egos stranded alone in their underpants while other more universally accepted ideas sashay off with their friends for poetry readings and dinner parties. Everyone has experiences, too. While going off the beaten track lures some bohemians to bang their bongos to a different drummers, in poetry it is important to appeal to the humanity that is common to us all. Poetry uses the art of empathy and identification to engage its audience, even in bongo banging.

A poet who cannot enchant a reader into the universe of his poem has missed the art and the magic of poetry. The most amazing rhyme or turn of a phrase will be lost if there is not some thread of human feeling for our souls to latch onto. We need to become an interactive part of any poem for it to have meaning.

Opinions are good tools for debate but in poetry, they can be an immediate turn off. A poet can offer different spins on life, death, childbirth, love, hate, jealousy, peace, war and even ice cream - but if those spins do not generate a feeling within, the poem will be an empty shell of words. An opinion is an intellectual construct. Experience is a learned sense of knowing and understanding based on exposure to life. Opinions cannot make us giggle, jump for joy, or shout from the rooftops. They are contrived cognitions put into words. We must live through life's moments of happiness as well as sadness in order for these to become part of our framework of thoughts and feelings. That is the beauty of experience.

Experience gives our sense of awe and well as our sense of awful. Both are important sensors when it comes to being human. Reflecting poetic thoughts off experience is a better way to write a poem. Experience can and does, in the end, make us appreciate life and each other.

And so does good poetry.

Learn more about this author, Loretta Murphy-Birster.
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